Arafura Rare Earths

Phase A — Understand the business

Lens 1 · Company Overview

Arafura Rare Earths (formerly Arafura Resources) is a development-stage critical-materials company with one cornerstone asset: the Nolans project, 135 km north of Alice Springs in Australia's Northern Territory. It has no operating revenue — it is a project developer pre-construction-completion ``.

Business model (planned, post-2029): Nolans is conceived as a vertically integrated "ore-to-oxide" operation — open-cut mine → on-site beneficiation → chemical processing plant producing separated neodymium-praseodymium (NdPr) oxide plus a heavy-rare-earth (Dy/Tb) stream and a fertilizer-grade phosphoric-acid by-product. This is the differentiator: most non-Chinese projects ship a mixed concentrate or carbonate to China for separation; Arafura intends to deliver a finished, separated oxide on Australian soil — one of the few mines outside China designed to do so ``.

• Planned product: ~4,440 tpa NdPr oxide (nameplate), plus ~7.5 tpa Dy-Tb oxide and ~144,000 tpa of 54% phosphoric acid as by-product ``.
• End markets: permanent-magnet supply chains — EV traction motors, offshore-wind turbines, and defense. NdPr is the value driver; it is the magnet rare-earth.
• Customers (contracted/MoU): Hyundai, Kia, Siemens Gamesa, Traxys (NA + Europe), Export Finance Australia (sovereign reserve), GE Vernova (MoU). See Lens 2.
• Contract structure: multi-year binding offtake (5-yr Traxys NA term + 2-yr option; Siemens Gamesa long-term for Cuxhaven, Germany magnet plant). These are volume commitments, not classic take-or-pay price floors — pricing references market indices, which is the bull/bear hinge (Lens 12).
• Suppliers / inputs: reagents (notably sulphuric acid — a sector-wide chokepoint, see Lens 2), power, and construction EPC contractors. The deposit also contains uranium and thorium, requiring a radiation-removal processing step and adding permitting/handling complexity ``.

Plain-terms verdict: This is a long-life mining-plus-chemical-plant project-finance story dressed as an equity. The "company" today is a balance sheet, a permit stack, an offtake book, and an EPC plan — the operating business does not exist yet.

Lens 2 · Supply Chain

Named-stakeholder map, upstream input → Arafura → end customer:

Upstream (inputs into Nolans):

• Reagents — sulphuric acid: the binding sector chokepoint. Lynas's Kalgoorlie plant had its sulphuric-acid supply (from BHP) disrupted when BHP suspended WA nickel operations ``. Any Australian RE-processing plant competes for the same acid/reagent and skilled-EPC pool — Arafura faces the identical input risk. Single-source / regional-scarcity flag.
• Power: remote NT location; grid/diesel/renewable hybrid. Lynas Kalgoorlie suffered ~1 month of lost output from Nov-2025 power disruptions `` — a direct read-through to Nolans commissioning risk.
• EPC / construction labor: Australian RE-plant construction has a thin contractor bench; cost-overrun and ramp risk is endemic (Lens 13).

Midstream — Arafura / Nolans:

• Mine (open-cut, 7 pit stages, ~340 ktpa concentrate) → process plant ~8.5 km south → separation → separated NdPr oxide. The intent to separate on-site is what removes the China-separation dependency that traps most peers ``.

Downstream (named offtake buyers):

• Hyundai + Kia (Korea) — EV magnet supply chain.
• Siemens Gamesa — binding, NdPr for permanent magnets at its Cuxhaven, Germany offshore-wind plant ``.
• Traxys North America — 500 tpa NdPr oxide + 7.5 tpa Dy-Tb, 5-yr term (+2-yr option), explicitly aimed at US supply ``.
• Traxys Europe — min 100 tpa, scalable to 300 tpa NdPr ``.
• Export Finance Australia (EFA) — 500 tpa NdPr under Australia's Critical Minerals Strategic Reserve (was a non-binding letter of support, then firmed in the FID package) ``.
• GE Vernova — MoU (non-binding) ``.

Chokepoint summary: the dangerous nodes are upstream reagents/power (commissioning risk) and the separation step itself (technically hard — even MP Materials' Fort Worth magnet ramp and Lynas's Kalgoorlie ramp prove how unforgiving this is). The demand side is unusually de-risked for a developer — Western OEMs and a sovereign reserve are queued for the output. The supply chain's strategic logic (ex-China NdPr) is excellent; the execution chain is where projects of this kind die.

Lens 3 · Competitive Advantages (moats)

For a pre-production developer, "moat" = durability of the asset's structural advantages, not pricing power today.

• Resource quality / longevity (real, durable): 56 Mt resource grading 2.6% TREO with 26.4% of the basket as NdPr — a high NdPr-distribution, and a 38-year mine life at nameplate ``. Long-life, high-magnet-fraction deposits outside China are scarce. This is the genuine moat.
• Vertical integration / "oxide not concentrate" (strategic moat, unproven): producing separated oxide on-shore is what Western buyers and governments will pay a premium for — it sidesteps China's processing chokehold. But the moat only exists if the separation flowsheet works at scale. Until commissioning, this is a thesis, not a moat.
• Sovereign/strategic backing (a real, modern moat): EFA offtake into the Critical Minerals Strategic Reserve, NAIF, Australia's NRFC convertible note, Germany's KfW, and a US-aimed Traxys deal — Arafura is wired into the Western policy effort to de-risk rare-earths from China. In a market where the US has set a $110/kg NdPr defense price floor ``, being a politically-favored ex-China oxide source is a structural advantage MP and Lynas also enjoy. Arafura is the third name in that club.
• Bargaining power: weak today. As a single-asset developer needing capital, Arafura needs its lenders and cornerstone (Hancock) more than they need it — the dilution terms (below) prove it. Over customers it has more leverage (scarce ex-China NdPr), which is why offtake came together faster than financing.

Moat verdict: the asset has a durable resource + strategic-positioning moat; the equity has none until first oxide. The bargaining-power axis currently runs against shareholders.

Lens 4 · Segments

n/a — single-asset, pre-revenue. No segment reporting exists; segments.csv is header-only. The entire enterprise is the Nolans project. Future "segments" would be: NdPr oxide (revenue driver), heavy rare earths (Dy/Tb, small), and phosphoric acid (by-product credit that lowers effective NdPr opex from A$43.70/kg to A$28.60/kg — see Lens 5/11) ``.

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Phase B — Measure performance

Operating-battery note: Arafura is pre-revenue, so the "performance" lenses re-point to project economics, the financing print, the catalyst calendar, and developer comps — there are no earnings, consensus, or margins to beat.

Lens 5 · "Earnings Result" → Project economics & the financing print

There is no earnings print. The scoreable "result" is the FID package and the DFS economics:

• DFS (updated July 2024): post-tax NPV8 of US$1.729bn, IRR 17.2%, net capital cost ~US$1.2bn ``.
• Operating cost: A$43.70/kg NdPr, falling to A$28.60/kg net of the phosphoric-acid by-product credit ``. (An earlier 2019 DFS cited US$25.94/kg — directionally a low-cost asset, but the 2024 number is the live one.)
• Critical sensitivity (the whole bear case in one line): the DFS itself flags that prices sustained 20–30% below DFS assumptions could render the project uneconomic without subsidy/revenue guarantees ``. A 17.2% IRR is a thin return for single-asset, first-of-its-kind processing risk.
• The FID (21 May 2026): the board declared FID, transitioning Nolans to execution, conditional on a shareholder EGM and final funding/offtake conditions ``.
• The financing stack (the "balance-sheet flag"):
• Debt: ~US$775m conditional debt commitments (senior + ECA — EFA, KfW, NAIF) ``.
• Equity: A$481m raise completed Q4 2025; a further A$350m / A$375m placement (mid-2026) cornerstoned by Hancock Prospecting; A$200m convertible note from Australia's National Reconstruction Fund Corp (NRFC); a residual ~US$134m equity tranche still to finalize ``.
• Headline package variously reported as ~A$1.2bn–A$1.35bn secured/committed ``.
• The two open conditions (must clear by 1 December 2026):

1. Shareholder approval of the equity/convertible issuance (EGM — reported as 10 June, with a separate/rescheduled EGM referenced for July; widely expected to pass given Hancock's backing) ``. Data conflict flagged — see below.
2. The ~1,200-tonne offtake gap: binding offtake covers 66% of the 4,440 tpa nameplate, while project lenders typically require ~80% before drawdown — leaving ~1,200 tpa to be locked ``.

Date conflict — FID vs. vote (flagged): "FID taken 21 May 2026" coexists with a "make-or-break shareholder vote on 10 June" and references to a 2 July EGM. Best read: the board declared a conditional FID on 21 May; full financial close depends on the EGM + the offtake gap + final tranche, with a hard 1 December 2026 long-stop. Construction could start as early as September 2026 if conditions clear.

Lens 6 · "Earnings Calls" → Management messaging & sentiment trend

No earnings calls (pre-revenue). Management communication runs through ASX announcements and investor updates. Sentiment trajectory over the last ~6 months is the story: a clear arc from "offtake triumph" (Traxys, sovereign deals, FID) to "investor scepticism within a week" ``. Management's consistent framing — "vertically integrated, Australia's first ore-to-oxide, 93% covered, fully-funded pathway" — has been repeatedly undercut by the market's focus on the dilution and the binding-offtake gap. The recurring management phrase is strategic-sovereignty ("ex-China supply chain"); the thing the market keeps hearing instead is "another raise." When a developer's narrative and its share price diverge this hard, the tape is telling you the equity holders bear the project risk while the sovereigns/lenders extract the strategic value.

Lens 7 · Comps

Peer table — Arafura vs. the two ex-China rare-earth majors.

Read: Arafura cannot be valued on multiples — it has no revenue. The relevant comp insight is that the entire ex-China rare-earth complex trades at extreme premiums (Lynas ~19× EV/sales, MP ~22× P/S vs. a ~1.6× industry norm) because the market is pricing strategic scarcity, not current cash flow . That premium is the bull case for Arafura's *eventual* re-rate — **if** it reaches production. The right way to value ARU today is **risk-adjusted NPV vs. enterprise value** (Lens 11), not a peer multiple. At ~A$1.24bn market cap against a US$1.729bn (≈A$2.6bn) DFS NPV8, the equity trades at **<0.5× un-risked NPV** — appropriate for an asset still carrying financing + construction + ramp risk .

Lens 8 · Stock-Price Catalysts

What has moved ARU (mostly ``):

• Offtake signings (+): Traxys NA/Europe, Siemens Gamesa, EFA sovereign reserve — each a step-up in de-risking demand.
• Equity raises / dilution (−, dominant): the placement cornerstoned by Hancock saw shares drop ~23% on announcement; over a recent 30-day stretch shares fell ~26%, caught between the financing vote and institutional departures . An institutional placement created ~1.7bn new shares; reported dilution **35–40%** in one tranche .
• The "great rotation" (structural): passive/index funds exiting as the stock's index treatment shifts, while Hancock Prospecting accumulates to ~17.5% ``. Forced index selling into a strategic accumulator is a recognizable setup — it pressures price short-term but concentrates the register in committed hands.
• NdPr price moves (+/−, macro): the 2026 NdPr rally (see Lens 11) is the single biggest external lever — Arafura is a high-beta call option on the NdPr price.
• Government/permitting milestones (+): NT government backing, NAIF, the federal offtake.

Pattern: ARU reacts hardest to share-count news (down) and NdPr price/strategic-policy news (up). It barely trades on "fundamentals" because there are none yet — it is a financing-and-commodity-price instrument. That is exactly what you'd expect of a pre-FID single-asset developer.

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Phase C — Judge people & books

Lens 9 · Management

• CEO / MD — Darryl Cuzzubbo (since Feb 2024). 30+ years; 24 years at BHP running complex operations (Olympic Dam, explosives plants across 20+ countries); prior MD/CEO of SolGold. BEng (1st-class Hons) Mech, MEng (TQM), MBA ``. Assessment: a genuine large-scale operator parachuted in precisely to take a perennial developer across the FID line — exactly the profile Nolans needed. The SolGold tenure (a long-gestating, capital-hungry project that also leaned on strategic backers) is a relevant, double-edged credential.
• Chairman — Mark Southey (since 2018). Ex-Honeywell, ABB, WorleyParsons global exec leadership `` — engineering/EPC pedigree, fitting for a build phase.
• CFO — Peter Sherrington (since 2013). Long tenure spanning the whole financing odyssey — institutional memory, but also the architect of a capital structure the market is punishing.
• CPO — Tommie van der Walt (Chief Projects Officer) — owns the EPC build.

Track record (quantified): the honest scorecard is that this team has not yet built anything at Nolans — the asset has been "almost financed" for over a decade. The achievement to date is assembling a fundable package (sovereign offtake + Hancock cornerstone + ECA debt) where prior attempts failed; that is real, and Cuzzubbo's arrival correlates with it. But there is no delivered, on-time, on-budget RE plant on this management's record at this company.

Skin in the game / register: the dominant ownership signal is external — Hancock Prospecting (Gina Rinehart) ~17.5%, the largest holder, part of a deliberate strategy of 5–16% stakes across Western rare-earth/lithium names ``. A committed, deep-pocketed strategic anchor is a strong positive for funding certainty; it is not the same as broad insider alignment, and it comes with the dilution that retail holders are absorbing.

Capital-allocation history: the only capital story is repeated equity issuance to keep the project alive — by definition value-dilutive per-share, even if value-accretive at the asset level. There is no buyback/ROIC history to judge (pre-revenue).

Red flags (management-level): none of the fraud variety surfaced. The legitimate governance concern is serial, large, dilutive raisings and the resulting 35–40% single-tranche dilution `` — shareholder-value erosion through the cap table, not misconduct.

Archetype: professional-manager turnaround/delivery CEO (Cuzzubbo) over a strategically-anchored (Hancock) developer. Right archetype for the build-out phase; the test is execution, not vision.

Lens 10 · Forensic Red Flags

Forensic frame — but note: there are no audited financials in the research layer and no SEC filings, so this is necessarily lighter than for a US filer. Items below are /.

• Going-concern / runway (the central forensic issue): as a pre-revenue developer mid-construction-finance, Arafura's solvency depends entirely on closing the financing package (debt drawdown gated on the 80% offtake threshold + the EGM + the residual ~US$134m equity, all by 1 Dec 2026) . **Failure to clear conditions = the package can collapse** — explicitly reported as a binary . This is the single largest "accounting" risk: not manipulation, but funding continuity.
• Dilution / share count: +37% shares outstanding YoY, flagged as a "major risk" by third-party screens; a 446.4m-share follow-on at A$0.28; ~1.7bn new shares in one institutional placement ``. Per-share value is being continuously reset.
• Capitalized vs. expensed dev cost: like all developers, exploration/development spend is capitalized — a future impairment risk if NdPr prices fall below the DFS economics or the build over-runs (the DFS's own 20–30% price-sensitivity warning is the trigger condition) ``.
• By-product accounting: the economics lean on a phosphoric-acid by-product credit to cut NdPr opex by ~A$15/kg — credible (144 ktpa of 54% acid), but it makes headline cost sensitive to fertilizer prices, a second commodity exposure buried in a "rare earths" story ``.
• Radioactive handling (U/Th): the deposit's uranium/thorium content adds processing, waste-handling, and permitting cost/liability not present in cleaner deposits ``.
• Housekeeping (mildly positive): 429,380 performance rights + 30,000 options lapsed 25 Mar 2026, marginally reducing overhang ``.

Regulatory findings (required sub-section):

• SEC (EDGAR LR + AAER): None possible — Arafura has no CIK, is not a US filer, and is not indexed in EDGAR ``.
• Non-SEC enforcement (web search): No material FTC/DOJ/FDA/ASIC/consent-decree/penalty hits surfaced for "Arafura Rare Earths" in the searches run for this dossier. The live regulatory exposure is permitting/environmental, not enforcement — the project has navigated NT and federal environmental review, with environmental scrutiny repeatedly cited as a residual gate alongside the shareholder vote ``.
• Legal proceedings (Item-3 equivalent): no material litigation disclosed in available public sources ``. (No 10-K Item 3 exists — foreign issuer.)
• Conclusion: No material regulatory or legal enforcement findings — verified via SEC EDGAR EFTS (LR + AAER → 0, no CIK) and web search as of 2026-06-22. Primary regulatory risk is environmental/permitting, not enforcement.

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Phase D — Project & stress-test

Lens 11 · Forward Projection (rNPV + runway-to-catalyst frame)

EPS projection is not meaningful — Arafura will not generate net income until ~2029–2030 at the earliest, and the path to it is dominated by financing and construction, not operating leverage. The honest projection is risk-adjusted NPV vs. enterprise value, plus the runway-to-first-production question. All figures built on DFS inputs.

Asset value anchor ``:

• Post-tax NPV8 = US$1.729bn (≈A$2.6bn at ~0.66 AUDUSD) on base-case prices; IRR 17.2%; net capex US$1.2bn; 4,440 tpa NdPr over 38 yrs; opex A$28.60/kg (net of by-product).

Price scenarios (the dominant swing variable):

• Base: ~US$90,000/t NdPr oxide (≈US$90/kg) — BMI's FY26 average forecast ``; DFS economics roughly hold → NPV ~US$1.7bn, equity worth materially more than today's ~A$1.24bn cap once de-risked.
• Bull: NdPr holds the 2026 rally (Nd metal hit ~US$122/kg in China; +136% YTD) and/or the US$110/kg Pentagon defense floor becomes an effective Western benchmark `` → IRR well above 17%, multi-bagger equity re-rate toward the Lynas/MP strategic premium.
• Bear: NdPr reverts 20–30% below DFS assumptions (China releases quota / demand disappoints) → DFS says the project approaches uneconomic ``; combine with a cost over-run and the equity is impaired.

**rNPV :** apply a blunt **~50% probability-of-success haircut** for combined financing-close + construction + ramp risk to the A$2.6bn base NPV → **~A$1.3bn risk-adjusted equity-relevant value**, which is **~in line with today's ~A$1.24bn market cap** . Translation: the market is currently pricing Nolans as a coin-flip. Clear the financing + offtake gate and the PoS jumps (say to 70–75%), and the implied value re-rates ~40–50% higher, before any NdPr-price upside. Miss the gate, and the downside is severe.

Runway-to-catalyst (the real question): does cash reach the next value-inflection? The catalysts are sequential and near: (1) shareholder EGM (Jun/Jul 2026), (2) close the ~1,200 tpa binding offtake to the lenders' 80%, (3) financial close + debt drawdown (long-stop 1 Dec 2026), (4) construction start (~Sep 2026), (5) first production (~2028–2029, commercial ramp toward late-2029) ``. Each cleared gate is a re-rate; each missed gate is a re-raise or a collapse.

Forecast logging: forecast.ts create is skipped — per --watchlist rules, no Brier forecast is logged in the unattended breadth loop, and an EPS line is not the right scoreable claim for a pre-revenue developer anyway. The scoreable binary for a future pass is "Arafura reaches financial close / drawdown by 1 Dec 2026."

Lens 12 · Bull vs Bear

Bull case. Arafura owns a 38-year, high-NdPr-fraction, low-cost (A$28.60/kg) rare-earth asset at the exact moment the West is paying almost any price for ex-China NdPr — China still controls ~85% of mine supply and ~90% of magnet-making, the market is in a second consecutive deficit year, NdPr is in a structural rally, and the US has set a US$110/kg defense floor ``. Demand is extraordinarily de-risked for a developer: Hyundai, Kia, Siemens Gamesa, GE, Traxys, and a sovereign reserve are queued. Financing is now mostly assembled with government ECAs + a Gina Rinehart cornerstone (17.5%). The two ex-China producers trade at 19–22× sales on strategic scarcity — if Nolans reaches production, ARU re-rates toward that premium from a <0.5× un-risked-NPV starting point. Pre-mortem-of-the-bull-being-right: financing closes by Dec-2026, NdPr holds >US$90/kg, the plant commissions near-budget, and ARU becomes the third pillar of the Western rare-earth supply chain.

Bear case (2–3 permanent-impairment risks).

1. The price is China's to set. NdPr economics are dictated by Chinese quota/export policy. China can flood the market and break the DFS at will; a 20–30% price drop renders Nolans uneconomic by the company's own admission ``. A subsidized Western floor partly offsets this, but the structural price-maker is the adversary, not the customer.
2. Single-asset, first-of-its-kind execution. No on-shore Australian ore-to-separated-oxide plant has been built; Lynas's and MP's ramps prove how brutal RE separation + reagent supply + power are ``. A construction over-run or commissioning failure on a single asset is company-defining, with no second asset to absorb it.
3. The cap table eats the equity. Serial, large, dilutive raisings (+37% shares YoY, 35–40% single-tranche dilution) mean even a successful project may deliver modest per-share returns — the strategic value accrues to sovereigns, lenders, and the cornerstone, while ordinary holders fund the risk ``.

Pre-mortem (18 months out, thesis broke): the EGM passed but the 1,200 tpa binding-offtake gap never closed at acceptable price terms, debt drawdown stalled, a bridging raise diluted holders further, NdPr softened as China eased quotas, and the equity de-rated 40%+. Plausible — every link in that chain is already visible today.

Are multiples too high? ARU has no multiple. But the sector's 19–22× sales premium is pricing perfection at Lynas/MP — a sector-wide NdPr correction would compress those comps and drag ARU's re-rate ceiling lower.

Contrarian view (what the market refuses to see): the index-fund exodus and the relentless dilution narrative have made ARU a falling knife the market is treating as a structurally broken equity — but a fully-financed, government-and-Hancock-backed, 38-year NdPr asset, post-financial-close, is a fundamentally different and far less risky instrument than the pre-close, perpetually-raising entity being sold today. The market is (rationally) pricing the financing risk; it may be under-pricing the step-change in risk that financial close itself delivers. The asymmetry sits at the financing-close event, not in the ore body.

Lens 13 · Devil's Advocate (short-seller)

Dismantling the bull case:

• Where the money structurally breaks: Arafura is a price-taker on a commodity its single largest competitor-nation administers. China doesn't need to out-mine Arafura; it needs only to let the price fall to a level where a 17.2% IRR turns negative — and it has every strategic incentive to discipline Western entrants exactly that way. A "defense floor" covers a thin slice of demand, not the commercial EV/wind volume the DFS depends on.
• Revenue concentration: output is committed to a handful of named offtakers; if Siemens Gamesa's offshore-wind build slows, or Hyundai/Kia re-source, the binding book that justifies the debt weakens precisely when prices are weak — correlated, not diversified, risk.
• Moat weaker than bulls think: the "oxide not concentrate" edge is unproven at scale and is the hardest part of the flowsheet. Until commissioned, the moat is a brochure. Lynas — vastly more experienced — still suffers power and reagent shocks.
• Most dangerous competitor bulls underestimate: not MP or Lynas — it's the next cohort of cheaper ionic-clay heavy-RE and other government-funded Western projects (and Chinese capacity itself) all chasing the same OEM offtake and the same scarce capital. Capital and offtake are the scarce resources, and Arafura is late and dilutive in competing for both.
• Worst capital-allocation pattern: the structural reliance on equity issuance — each raise resets per-share value; the register is being handed to Hancock and ECAs while retail funds the gap.
• Assumptions that must hold for today's price: financing fully closes by 1 Dec 2026; the offtake gap closes at DFS-consistent prices; NdPr stays >~US$90/kg through a 3-yr build; the plant commissions near-budget. Break any one and the equity re-rates down.
• If growth/price disappoints 20–30%: by the company's own DFS, the project approaches uneconomic — the most damning single fact in the file.
• The one scenario that permanently impairs: financing collapse (EGM/offtake/condition failure before 1 Dec 2026) forcing a distressed recap or shelving — for a single-asset pre-revenue developer, that is existential, and it is a live, dated risk, not a tail.

Lens 14 · Management Questions (15, ordered by information value)

1. The lenders' 80% binding-offtake threshold implies a ~1,200 tpa gap — what is the realistic timeline and the price terms on which you'll close it, and what happens to debt drawdown if it slips past 1 December 2026?
2. If all conditions are not satisfied by the 1 December 2026 long-stop, does the financing package collapse in full — and what is the contingency that isn't another equity raise?
3. At what sustained NdPr price does Nolans' post-tax IRR fall below your cost of capital, and how much of your offtake carries a price floor vs. pure index-referenced pricing?
4. China can move the NdPr price at will. What in your offtake or financing structure protects equity holders from a deliberate Chinese price-suppression campaign during your 3-year build?
5. Given +37% share growth in a year, what is the maximum further dilution existing holders should expect through to first production, including the NRFC convertible's conversion?
6. What is your current cash runway in months, and at what point in the construction schedule do you reach self-funding?
7. On a first-of-its-kind on-shore separation flowsheet, what is the contingency in the US$1.2bn capex, and what are the top three commissioning risks (reagent supply, power, ramp) you've underwritten?
8. Lynas lost ~a month of output to power disruption and faces sulphuric-acid supply risk. How is Nolans' reagent and power supply secured and contracted, and at what cost certainty?
9. The phosphoric-acid by-product credit cuts opex by ~A$15/kg. What fertilizer price underpins that credit, and what is unit cost if that market halves?
10. How are management and board incentives structured relative to per-share value creation (not just FID/first-production milestones)?
11. With Hancock at ~17.5% and index funds exiting, what governance protections exist for minority holders, and is there any standstill or further-creep arrangement with Hancock?
12. What is the U/Th radioactive waste-handling and rehabilitation liability over the 38-year life, and how is it provisioned and permitted?
13. Which environmental/permitting approvals remain outstanding, and what is the gating risk to the September construction start?
14. What gross-margin / cost position do you model at steady state vs. Lynas, and where on the global NdPr cost curve does Nolans sit?
15. Beyond Nolans, is there any second-asset or downstream-magnet ambition, or does the equity remain a single-asset, single-commodity instrument indefinitely?

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